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Is It, Is It Not?

I continue to mull over whether or not I am depressed. I’m in excellent spirits and am quite productive, but there’s a lot of other things standing out that say maybe. For example, no matter how well I sleep (and I sleep like the dead), I’m not feeling terribly rested. I’m mucking by well enough, but I’m not terribly pleased with the continued… well, not zombie-level, but just generally feeling fatigued. This can be attributed to other things as well though, so I certainly don’t consider it a definitive sign.

One of the positive side-effects of depression for me is that I find it easier to write. And writing has been coming fairly easily to me. I do my brain-dumping daily over at 750words.com, and I’m currently managing to exceed 1,500 words a day (one of the badge-earning challenges is to complete 50k in a month, so I’m gunning for that). I’ve been surprising myself especially because all of it this month has been almost straight brain dump; I’ve not had to fish out story prompts or ideas to fill up the gap. That especially jives with the possibility of it being depression — my brain tends to have all sorts of thought-and-feels flows when I’m ‘down’.

The one glowing indication to me, however, is socialization. I’ve not made it socially over to Google+ in well over a month (even though I love the people there). I am finding it very difficult to start conversations with my zero-spoon friends, and outside of that circle? Fuggedaboutit! Even really easy, low/no-stress emails are taking me days to respond to at best. I cringe in terror if I see a private message on Facebook, though I’ve still got enough willpower to force myself to see that, of course, it’s a nice polite conversational message from someone who wants to talk to me, not eviscerate me for existing. And, as one might surmise, that sort of feeds into the difficulty of finding inner resources to deal with other people — rapture (insert vast amounts of eye-rolling at self here).

Still, as said — it’s not that bad. My focus is almost passable. I’m getting things done. I’m enjoying my life. I just feel like it could still be a bit better. I think that I will ask my psychiatrist when I see him next month if we can bump my antidepressant up a notch. If a little is good, more must be better, right? Though having said that, I don’t seriously follow that philosophy when it comes to taking meds. There’s the part of me that ‘knows’ that some day the doses I’m on won’t be enough even if it’s just about stabilizing me out right now, and I don’t want to be up so high that the drugs cease to be effective. I look at my 400mg/day dose of Seroquel, and while I know some folks are on doses as high as 950 or 1,000mg/day, my brain quietly frets about what happens when even that doesn’t cut it anymore. I hope I won’t see that day for a very long time.

Anyhoos, back to le work grind, here in the lovely breeze blowing in off of my mother-in-law’s garden. I hope that everyone is doing well.

I take the extended release and at night, which negates most of the sedative (as long as I hit my sleep right, hee hee). It’s been doing a lot of good of me since I started taking it nearly two years ago, starting with punching rapid cycling right in the face. The current depression is very minor, and I think, upping the antidepressant I started taking in May is going to have the best result. 🙂